Risk managers should contribute to long range planning and analysis. They can cause planners and modellers to recast their assumptions. In a recent workshop, participants and I were discussing risk assessment of the firm’s strategic plan, and considered wider systemic risk and emerging risk, that could undermine the organization.

On the issue of strategic risk, I first draw the reader’s attention to my 6-part series in which I discussed high quality risk assessment and future scenarios; strategic identity; stakeholders; and environmental scan. The essential point in that series is that risk assessment should be part of a complete research and planning process, including methods to deal with “black swan” risks and high uncertainty.

In this post, I want to elaborate on the idea of risk managers questioning assumptions that typically go unchallenged.